This worldview does not recognize that private, economic power has a capacity to coerce. They trace back to [antebellum slavery advocate and Vice President] John C. Calhoun. These libertarians, particularly Murray Rothbard, said that Calhoun gave them their fundamental core concepts. These concepts included that its government that creates exploitation, and that its the government that creates coercion, whereas private economics is about freedom and free exchange. All you have to know is that Calhoun was a slaveholdera man making his wealth from keeping other people in shackles. This is where their notions of wealth as non-coercive comes from.

The idea that wealth cannot be coercive is also the basis of their case for freeing corporations to spend unlimited amounts in politics and harangue their workers. They argue it is merely an exercise of free speech. Its interesting that they are also pushing these measures that make it more possible for employers to essentially have whats referred to in union terms as captive audience meetings, where they push out their political views to their employees and try to sway their vote. That, and these huge infusions of dark money, are being represented as a First Amendment freedom, as if it doesnt skew the outcome. But it all connects back in a perverse way to the notion that only government is coercive and that wealth is all about freedom, and enabling the free exchange between economic actors who are totally free.

As were talking, the Koch brothers are wrapping up their annual retreat and Mitch McConnell is plotting to take health care away from millions of peoplewe seem to have reached a kind of culmination of a lot of the intellectual trends that you write about in Democracy in Chains. Did you see this happening as you worked on the book? Have the past six months surprised you?

Ive been surprised by the velocity of the change. I believed that this is where we were heading, because if you block off the political process from answering peoples needs, as the radical right managed to do throughout Barack Obamas two terms on so many major issues, then people get frustrated. They get frustrated that politics has become so polarized between right and left and they believe that liberal democracy does not workthey start to believe that we need a radical alternative. Its very much like the interwar period of the 20th century with the rival poles of fascism and communism.

There were times when I thought, Am I being melodramatic? But this seemed to be the necessary outcome of what these people were doing to the political process. I am not surprised, but I am gobsmacked by just how cynically the Republicans have been operating and the extent to which the Kochs have taken over one of our major political parties, and how the whole situation is poisoning our public life and public debate.

One thing that helped Donald Trump get elected is that he didnt represent the Republican status quo, which is heavily tilted towards a political philosophy pushed by Buchanan and Charles Koch. Many Republican voters seem to be turned off by this philosophyparticularly its emphasis on privatization and on dismantling the welfare state.

This is a challenge in our polarized environment because I really want to reach Republican voters. Its been said that political parties are a lot like sports teams. People have a loyalty to their team. But what longtime Republican voters need to understand is that their team is no longer playing for the home crowd.

On issue after issue you see vast majorities of Republicans who actually agree on some of the fundamental needs of the country: They support a progressive income tax, they want to address global warming, they care about the preservation of Medicare and Social Security as originally construed as social insurance, they care about public education. They are not the enemies of Democrats. But they have been riled up by this apparatus, and by very cynical Republican leaders, to support a party that is undermining the things that they seek.

A recent study produced by the Voter Study Group found that libertarians basically dont exist in the American body politic. And yet your book lays out the extent to which theyve essentially taken over the Republican Party over the last few decades.

The Republican Party leadership bases its pitch to voters on a set of anodyne phrases. We are the party of freedom, and liberty, and small government. And that sounds good. Who is against freedom? Who wants super-intrusive government? But when you actually look at what theyre doing, they are freeing corporations to do whatever they want to their workers, the environment, retirees, and so forth and so on.When they say theyre for limited government that isnt really true.

If you look closely, what theyre doing is limiting the branches of government that are the most responsive to voters: local government and federal government. But they are for extreme power for state governments, which they find much easier to control. We are seeing this happen all around the country where these Koch-funded state policy network organizations and the American Legislative Exchange Council are working hand-in-glove to push what is called preemption. They use the power over state governments to prevent localities from doing things like raising wages, enacting anti-discrimination ordinances, even passing plastic bag ordinances! Its just a huge power grab.

One of the most fascinating and terrifying chapters in Democracy in Chains investigates Buchanans role in Chile, where Buchanan and Friedman pushed economic liberalization and extreme constitutional protections for the wealthy. Both have been disastrous for democracy. Do you see similar tactics right now, with the rush to push through health care legislation in the House and Senate?

Short answer: yes. They understand that sunshine and deliberation are not helpful to this project, and that it is very important to move things along as quickly as possible. I absolutely think the Chilean experience is what emboldened Buchanan and Koch to think, Wow, we can actually do this. Its going to be more complicated to do it in a functioning democracy, but we could actually achieve this constitutional revolution because we did it in Chile.

Most of the resistance that has appeared over the past six months has been focused on Trump, rather than people like Mitch McConnell or Charles Koch. Is this a mistake?

Its a huge mistake to imagine Trump as being separate from this story and sui generis. He was the logical culmination, in some ways, of this effort to derail our government and totally discredit norms of public service, the idea of a common good, and the belief that elected officials were actually workingin the flawed ways that ordinary mortals dotoward the public good. Trumps election is the fruit of this project, even if Trump was elected, in part, because he was the only Republican candidate not carrying Koch baggage. And yet, the Koch and Trump stories are not separate at all, and it would be a terrible mistake for those trying to resist this agenda to treat them as such.

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The Right's War Against Liberal Democracy - New Republic